Chapter One


My horse, good beast that he was, stood steady, ears pricked to listen, as were mine.

When a man has enemies he had best beware, and I, Barnabas Sackett, born of the fenland and but lately returned from the sea, had enemies I knew not of.

The blackness of my plumed hat and cloak fed themselves into the blackness of the forest, leaving no shape for the eye to catch. There was only the shine of captured light from my naked blade as I waited, listening.

Something or somebody was in the forest near me, what or who it might be I knew not, nor was I a believer in the devils and demons thought to haunt these forests.

Devils and demons worried me not, but there were men abroad, with blades as keen as mine, highwaymen and creatures of the night who lay waiting for any chance traveler who might come riding alone... to his death, if they but had their will.

Yet the fens had trained me well, for we of the fens learned to be aware of all that was happening about us. Hunters and fishers we were, and some of us smugglers as well, although of these I was not one. Yet we moved upon our hidden ways, in darkness or in light, knowing each small sound for what it was. Nor had wandering in the forests of Raleigh's land among the red Indians allowed my senses to grow dull.

Something lurked, but so did I.

My point lifted a little, expecting attack. Yet those who might be waiting to come at me were but men who bled, even as I.

It was not attack that came from the darkness, but a voice.

"Ah, you are a wary one, lad, and I like that in a man. Stand steady, Barnabas, I'll not cross your blade. It is words I'll have, not blood."

"Speak then, and be damned to you. If words are not enough, the blade is here. You spoke my name?"

"Aye, Barnabas, I know your name and your table, as well. I've eaten a time or two in your fen cottage from which you've been absent these many months."

"You've shared meat with me? Who are you, then? Speak up, man!"

"I'd no choice. It is the steps and the string for me if caught. I need a bit of a hand, as the saying is, and the chance to serve you, if permitted."

"Serve me how?"

He was hidden still, used as were my eyes to darkness, yet now my ears caught some familiar note, some sound that started memory rising.

"Ah!" It came to me suddenly. "Black Tom Watkins!"

"Aye." He came now from the shadows. "Black Tom it is, and a tired and hungry man, too."

"How did you know me then? It is a time since last I traveled this road."

"Don't I know that? Yet it is not only I who know of your coming, nor your friend William, who farms your land. There are others waiting, Barnabas, and that is why I am here, in the damp and darkness of the forest, hoping to catch you before you ride unwitting into their company."

"Who? Who waits?"

"I am a wanted man, Barnabas, and the gallows waits for me, but I got free and was in the tavern yonder studying upon what to do when I heard your name spoken. Oh, they kept their voices low, but when one has lived in the fens as you and I... well, I heard them. They wait to lay you by the heels and into Newgate Prison."

He came a step nearer. "You've enemies, lad. I know naught of them nor their reasons, but guilty or not they've a Queen's warrant for you, and there's a bit in it for them if they take you."

A Queen's warrant? Well, it might be. There had been a warrant. Yet who would know of that and be out to take me? We were a far cry from London town, and it was an unlikely thing.

"They are at the cottage?" I asked.

"Not them. There's a bit of a tavern only a few...

 

Narrator John Curless has Barnabas's sincere, ingenuous courage down pat, as well as his rural accent. He reads accurately enough, but one wishes he were more expressive, more sensitive to the moods and tempos of the various scenes. Y.R. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine

 

To the Far Blue Mountains by Louis L'Amour
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